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Friday, July 07, 2017

Rohingya children going hungry

More than 80,000 young children may need treatment for malnutrition in part of western Myanmar where the army cracked down on stateless Rohingya Muslims last year, the World Food Programme (WFP) said.

"The survey confirmed a worsening of the food security situation in already highly vulnerable areas (since October)," the U.N. agency said. About a third of those surveyed reported "extreme ...food insecurity" such as going a day and night without eating. Not one of the children covered in the survey was getting a "minimum adequate diet," the report said, adding that an estimated 80,500 children under the age of five would need treatment for acute malnutrition in the next year.

The liberals' icon Suu Kyi is refusing to grant access to a United Nations-mandated mission tasked with investigating allegations of abuses by security forces in Rakhine and elsewhere. A WFP map shows that villages, where the military was most active, were highly vulnerable to hunger.